Vicki Poole  

Vicki Poole, former director of the Office of School to Work at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, talks about educators and businesspeople working together to ensure that the school curriculum is adequate for life and for work. Excerpted from the Rural Audio Journal (Vol. 2, No. 3), From School to Work--and Back Again: Apprenticeships for Rural Students (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1994).

"I think that educators sitting in isolation can't possibly know all of the curriculum that's needed for a student for the world of work and even for life anymore outside, and we need business to take a look at our curriculum and see what we're teaching, and for example, are we teaching the kinds of English that might be needed for the future. Now that doesn't mean that we have to accept all their answers and that business is going to drive totally what we're doing in schools, but we need a decent balance."

This Critical Issue was written by Kathleen Paris, former director of the Leadership Institute for School-to-Work Transition, Center on Education and Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Lynne Huske, Pathways coordinator at North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.

Date posted: 1998